Chapter 39

Chapter 39

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Surprisingly, the rest of the week played out rather normally after that.  Minus a few…changes.

For one, Miriam sat with Sidney and her group of friends every day at lunch.   It was strange, not being alone.  There were even a few times that she caught herself smiling at nothing, almost feeling like her old self again.

The second change wasn’t really a change, just a more regular occurrence.

Every morning, on her way to school, she met Eliot at the curve in the road.

Some days they talked.  Some days they didn’t.  Though, if they did, it was always about a natural topic.

Questions on his part about high school, that made her suspect he had never set foot in one before; what do you do there?  What do you learn?

Sometimes she’d ask about how he could withstand the daylight; by being careful on overcast days.

Or what was it like to not be able to feel your own heartbeat?

Quiet, he’d say.

But, that strange night at the lake was like forbidden territory.  None of them brought it up.

Her back yard still repelled her, though some nights when she laid in bed and listened hard enough…

She could hear the quiet silence that came from someone sitting on her back porch—just watching.  But she never had the guts to creep over to the window and check.

Still, by Friday she might have forgotten that another murder had even taken place at all—if it wasn’t for the strange new students that appeared in school on a cloud of too much mystery to be coincidence.

There were three of them.  Two were siblings, Alyea and Devlin Marcus; transfer students from some part of Europe, apparently.  At least according to Sidney, who spilled the gossip the moment she set her tray down on the lunch table.

The third person was a ‘cousin’ of the two; a massive teen by the name of Arnauld, who could have given Sage a run for his money.   They both had the same bulky build.  The same cocky air of danger that instinctively made the other students avoid getting too close.

Only Arnauld's skin was healthy shade of caramel rather than pale.  His silver eyes, the color of moonlight, glowed even from halfway across the cafeteria.

The two siblings, who moved with an eerie grace, stood out just as much—the girl especially.  Her footsteps were as stealthy as a panther's, paired with an icy confidence that easily caught the eye of every boy in school.   Green eyes blazed as she seemed to take everything in with just a glance.

But what caught Miriam’s attention was the long golden hair cascading down her back like a waterfall.

'One of them was a blond,' Sage had said after he'd gone searching for the source of the grim housewarming present.  'I know, I saw her hair...'

Her brother was handsome as well, in a less obvious way.  Dark brown hair topped off a lanky frame and a good-looking face.  His eyes were a soft shade of green that seemed to smile even when his mouth wasn’t.

“I think he likes you,” Miriam heard Sidney whisper.  “Look, he’s staring!  Though, it could just be because of your necklace,” she added, turning to stare at the blue stone resting on Miriam’s chest.  “It’s pretty eye-catching.”

“Yeah,” Miriam forced herself to say, as she stabbed at a mound of mash potatoes with her fork, even as her gaze never left the boy’s.

Those green eyes definitely were not staring at her blue stone.

He held her stare the entire time it took for him and his strange posse to cross the length of the cafeteria.  One brown eyebrow was slightly raised, and he seemed to be asking a question without words; know who I am?  Well, I know you…

It wasn't until he finally slipped from the double doors and broke the eye-contact, that Miriam realized Sidney had been watching her the whole time.

"You're right," she said, fingers shaking as she set down her fork.  “It’s probably just my necklace.”

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“We want answers, Eliot.”

With a sigh, Eliot turned to watch as Sage and Hazel slipped from the trees to block him in on either side. He stood on the banks of the lake, listening to the water lap against the earth as thoughts of Miriam ran through his mind.

He had meant to tell her the truth.  She deserved to know.  But, when he gazed into those brown eyes as she joked about vampires...he just couldn’t.

Coward, a part of him hissed.

And maybe he was.

It was so hard being around her.  Torture, trying to pretend that everything was alright.

That she was alright.

Every day he spent with her was like catching sand running through an hour glass.  He just didn’t know when the last few would fall...

He had barely even noticed Sage and Hazel sneaking up on him through the forest—though, the twins did seem unusually determined today.

They wore matching expressions in those black eyes than promised trouble.  Hazel didn’t even giggle as she approached from behind a tree.

She spoke first. “What’s going on, Eliot?”

“Someone’s playing games with us,” Sage echoed, crossing his arms.  “Shadowhunters are involved—”

“And we know it has everything to do with the witch."

“Tell us,” they demanded in unison.

Eliot watched the gray sky reflected over the surface of the water.  The sun was firmly locked behind a layer of cloud cover, but he could still feel an uncomfortable prickle over his skin; a warning that the slightest breeze could reveal those deadly rays.

He was surprised that the twins had risked broad daylight just to confront him.  As pure blooded vampires they were a lot more sensitive to the sun that he was.  Which was why he figured that Sage had the hood of a sweatshirt drawn low over his face, while Hazel was bundled in a black scarf, sporting another parasol; a bloody red one this time.

“You’ve been keeping secrets from us, Eliot,” she hissed.

He didn’t even try to deny it.  Instead he turned in the direction of the house and shoved his way between the two of them.

“You can’t just walk away from us!”  Hazel demanded, stomping her foot.

Eliot just paused and glanced over his shoulder.  “You coming?”

They weren’t the only ones who wanted answers.  After a few hundred years of dealing with Alazzdria he knew enough to suspect when the witch was scheming.

And right now he had the feeling that she was hiding something—big.

Sage and Hazel shared and look, but when Eliot turned around he knew that they followed. He led the way to the witch’s cabin and threw open the black door so hard that it bounced off the wall with a slam.

“Well, hello Eliot,” Alazzdria called sweetly from her position in the middle of the floor.  “How rude of you to barge in here and interrupt me from—”

“We want answers, Laz,” Eliot said, crossing over to her.

Once again, she was surrounded by piles of junk.

Open books and slips of paper, with countless symbols scribbled across them, were scattered all over the floor.   The witch’s hair seemed to stand on end, as she intently stared into space as if trying hard to remember something.

“I see you’ve brought company,” she added, tilting her head in the direction of the twins. “Unwanted company, I might add.”

“Just tell us what’s going on, witch,” Sage snapped, moving himself into a far corner.

“Yes!”  Hazel skipped across the room to throw herself into a rickety armchair.  “What kind of mess have you made for Eliot to clean up this time?”

This time.  As if he had made a habit out of getting Alazzdria out of sticky situations.  Which, he realized with a frown, he had.

“Can you put your mongrels to heel, please?”  Alazzdria called tiredly.  “All of this chatter is making it so hard to decipher it.”

“Decipher what?”  He asked, moving closer.  For the first time he realized that in the center of Alazzdria’s lap rested an old piece of parchment that seemed about as ancient as the witch herself.

Slowly, she looked up, a strange smile shaping her lips.  “Why the prophecy, of course.”

The entire room went dead silent.  Even Hazel’s mouth snapped shut.  Her eyes uneasily darted to her brother’s.

“What prophecy?”  Sage demanded, making the word sound dirty.

Alazzdria grinned.  “Why don’t you tell them, Eliot?”

Carefully, her pale fingers gripped either end of the parchment as she held it out to him.  “Read it.”

He took it.  The parchment was old and leathery beneath his fingers tips, but there was a sturdiness to it that made him guess it had been spelled against decay.  Ancient magic practically radiated from it; the brown surface even seemed to glow with the power trapped within.

However, it was pretty plain overall.  Hastily drawn runes had been scrawled across the middle of the page in a language so ancient, that only the oldest of the witches could speak it today.

Like the Danva.

To him, the black lines looked like elegant chicken scratch.

“I can’t read it,” he admitted, bending down to place the parchment on the floor.   The old magic itched at his fingertips and he curled his hand into a fist to stop it.

“No fear,” Alazzdria announced.  “I can remember most of it.”

She curled her legs beneath her and tilted her chin thoughtfully.  “It rambles on mostly; ancient witches could be so superfluous—but the gist is easy to understand all the same." She dragged a finger carefully across the parchment's edge as if reading the words by touch.

"It tells of a time when seven beings will be born.  At a moment when the magic separating the seven realms will begin to split apart—”

“What?”  Sage interrupted.

All the same time Hazel scoffed, wrinkling her nose.  “Rubbish!”

“Will you tell them to hush?”  Alazzdria turned to Eliot with a sniff.  “I haven’t even gotten to the best part.”

“Knock it off,” he grumbled to the twins—but he was having a hard time believing it himself.

Almost all immortal beings knew about the seven realms; the seven halves of the world that separated vampire from human, and human from werewolf, and so on.

There was one realm for each being.  One for humans, one for witches, one for vampires all the way down the line.  Every realm had its own portal, policed by a race of beings known only as shadowhunters, who controlled who was allowed to leave and when.

It wasn’t an ideal arrangement, but the realms had been created thousands of years in the past, at a time when all the creatures had lived all on the same plane.   Back then, things had been…

To put it bluntly, pure and utter chaos.

Vampires had run wild, driven by bloodlust, while werewolves prowled the forests unchecked.  Most mortals had been reduced to little more than cattle.

Wars and constant fighting over territory had been the norm.

To end the fighting and control the bloodshed, a group of leaders from all five of the immortal tribes gathered together and came up with a solution.  They passed around an enchanted chalice and each gave a drop of their blood; vampire, werewolf, demon, witch and fey.

The gruesome mixture was consumed by a small group of humans who became know as the first shadow hunters. Together, they, with their mixed blood, created the seven realms in an effort for peace.

It hadn’t been a popular solution at the time, but at least it had put a damper on the worst of the violence.

For a little while.

Nowadays, most immortals saw the realms as a necessary pain.  There were a few who wanted them to split of course. and usher in a new reign of terror over the mortals.

But the point was that blood magic was the most strongest of its kind.

Indestructible.

The mere thought of that kind of magic being undone after thousands of years was...

Insane.

But Alazzdria rarely made jokes—especially when her own life was on the line.

“You understand, Eliot,” she said softly, as if reading his mind.  “You know it’s the truth.”

“So what if it is?”  Sage countered.  “That thing was written ages ago—how the hell can she even read it?”

“I know what it says because I can remember,” Alazzdria snapped.  “It was first read to me by someone who could, a long, long time ago.”  Her serene smile turned feral.   “You remember who, don’t you Eliot?”

Eliot shifted on his feet, aware that both pairs of the twin’s glittering black eyes were focused solely on him.

“Well, who?”  Hazel snapped when he didn’t answer.

“Vaddrian.”

The twins blinked.

“You mean that Vaddrian?”  Sage frowning, thinking hard for once.  “The one who…”

“Yes,” Eliot said, gazing into Alazzdria’s empty gray eyes.   “The one who turned us into vampires.”